Ezzat went the airport

Ezzat has been asking us to bring him to the airport to see aeroplanes. So yesterday, his Tok Wan brought him there early in the morning to catch the first flight. He's all excited, though I think he's still a bit sleepy (he slept pretty late the night before coz his young uncles came over , and they played till almost midnight and slept over at our house). And he asked me if he could bring the camera with him so he can snap some pictures. He's really into planes nowadays. Everyday he never fails to talk he about them, he draws them, when he's in the car, he's acting as if he's the pilot, he looks inside the encyclopedia for them and he looks for their pictures in the newspapers.

Here's one rather sleepy and sad? boy. He just missed his favorite plane - AirAsia! Luckily there's a consolation - a MAS waiting to depart.

A fairly new airport, just a few minutes drive from our home.

Watching the plane takes off.

And guess what Ezzat did after he came back? (He's pretty shy when I took this pic)

Ta-daa!!!

And some cakes...

Tok (Malay for Grandma) made some cakes for Emir and Farhan last Saturday and invited some of our close relatives to come over. Yup Farhan too - he's gonna be 6 on Nov 19th. We thought it's better to combine their birthdays for the time being until they can really understand about the concept of a Birth.Day. The 2 boys were really grumpy during Ezzat's birthday party and demanded they have theirs too at the same time. So it was all good in the end that night.

One cake for Emir.

And one cake for Farhan.

And a short vid to complement.

Emir wanted to cut the cake and Tok was assisting.

And had his first bite while everybody's watching.

Ooppss..hold on mama!

It's a pretty nice yummy cake.

And Ikram loves it! He's one of the 3 cousins the boys have at the moment.

Irfan and Emir. Irfan is Ikram's brother.

And Farhan with his ever ready 'Peace' sign. He's certainly 'peaceful' that night since he got his got to blow candles 2 weeks earlier!

Ezzat's getting sleepy.

Hanging out after dinner.

Fun time!

Emir and Ezzat with their young uncles and aunties.

Eid in 2 days!

I'm at the office, still. When everyone else..(almost) seems to already be in Eid mood. Luckily my assistant Ina still turns up to work, happily singing along to Eid songs on the radio since early morning. Emir has started his school holidays yesterday for a week while Ezzat and Farhan still go to their kindergarten which is already 90% empty by the way. AndI rather them spend some time learning something over there rather than at the laundry shop watching Ultraman the whole day. Luckily they don't protest!

One good thing this year, I don't have to join the frenzied traffic on the highway unlike the past 13 years coz I am already in Alor Star! Though I kinda miss all the excitement of going back to my 'kampung' (Kampung = village). It's always been very bad this time of the year, when people rush to go back to their hometown and traffic jam will always be massive, and cars will stuck for hours on highway. Along the way to office these few days, I saw many cars parked along the road side, the drivers stopped to buy fresh meat from instant mushrooming small stalls. And then there are lemang sellers everywhere. Lemang is a delicacy and one will usually find it only during Eid. It's made from glutinous rice, and instead of water, it's cooked with coconut milk, barbecued in hollowed bamboo stick. Yummy to be eaten with rendang which is another delicacies. Rendang is a dish, we either use white or red meat or vegetables even, cooked with some herbs and spices, chilies and coconut milk, slowly simmered so that the meat becomes tender and the liquid is almost gone, and the flavor of all the ingredients are nicely infused together. It takes hours, but the result is worth all the waiting. I'll take some pictures if I come across any of these later.

By the way, I still have many pictures need to be uploaded. Do you guys still want to see them? It's been quite a long time and they may not be that fun anymore to see...heh..I'm such a lazy bum when it comes to uploading coz it takes such a long time sometimes.

Anyway, here are some family pictures taken on morning of Eid last year. Mom always want the color to be coordinated so you'll see some sort of uniforms in here hehe. Nabila (my little sister) is missing though since she's in Auckland and will still be there until end of this year. I went to the tailor yesterday and my Eid dress is not ready yet coz the tailor's mom-in-law just passed away last week. But she said she'll try her best to make it ready by the 30th. So let's hope it will be ready by then. It's a tradition to wear new traditional clothes on morning of Eid. The boys already have theirs since mom bought for them. And Uncle Daniel has one too actually. Not sure if it fits him though. Too bad he's can't join us this year. Next year perhaps? :=)

Ezzat 's playing 'bunga api' on eve of 2007 Eid.

A picture of Mukthi's Fam plus Yati on morning of 2007 Eid. Notice the colorful envelopes that Farhan's holding? Kids get money in packets like that instead of presents - we call it 'duit raya'. I miss those days when I was still entitled to that huhu. Really fun days with all the $$$$! Nab's missing. Adik!.....Next year boleh join balik naaaaaaa.

Just us.

Hanging out before going back to Dad's village in Jitra.

Cheeky boys, happy to get duit raya!

Aaahhhh..this is the larger version of the Mukthi's clan at my Wan's house at our village. Almost all of my uncles and aunties are here, except for one with his wife. Wan (grand dad) and Tok (grandma) already passed away so many years ago. Dad's the eldest in the family, with 3 other brothers and 2 sisters. See how the boys outnumbered the girls? I think that's explain my 3 boys? Unfortunately I don't have any pictures of mom's side of the family. Hope to get some this year.

The heroes.

The Arabic alphabet song

Nadiah's house!

A video by Daniel

A New Park!

There are still many pictures from our previous adventures waiting to be updated in here. I will, definitely! But as for now let see what we're up to recently while I'm still in the 'updating' mood =)

So, last night we went to this new park. Dad and mom were having this hmm sort of casual dinner party there at the park with the state rowing boat team and some government officers (I guess they must have won a competition or something, hence the celebration). What dad didn't realize that some people brought their family along, and only after he got there with mom after like an hour, he quickly gave me a call and asked me to bring along the boys. It was a very last minute thing, and I already made plan to work at the other house so I expected that we're gonna be there just for awhile say like half an hour the most just to show our faces. BUT it turned out to be longer than that and it was actually pretty fun too!

I nicked this pic from my office network coz I don't have a recent day time picture of the park. At the time the picture was taken, it was not completed yet. This park which is called Taman Jubli Emas (Golden Jubilee Recreation Park) is constructed to commemorate the 50th anniversary of the reign of the 27th ruler of Kedah, Sultan Abdul Halim Mu'adzam Shah. The Sultan now is 80 yrs old. The 20-metre high landmark constitutes of 5 'keris' (a type of Malay traditional dagger) which symbolize the Sultan's 50 years in throne. The royal 'Tengkolok' a type of Malay men's traditional headdress is placed on top of the dagger's handle and it's one of the main royal costumes. Anyway, enough of the introduction, let's go to the fun part.

This is actually a funny picture coz the boys were squirming about some smelly bugs. Farhan squashed one coz it was flying near him and his hand smelled horrible after that. So these 2 fellas started to check their clothes too.

A random pic of Ezzat.

Mom in black and white, enjoying her food. They put up a screen with a projector that showed the Olympic - badminton - Men single, final game between Malaysia and China. China won. Nevertheless, our first medal.

Some random pictures of Farhan.

Oppss, the show has started!

Some cool music started to play, a mix of traditional malay songs, classical & modern. And our Mr Emir here started to pretend his conducting the show! He even got a balloon stick as the Baton.

Emir was really having fun last night, he conducted, he danced. Check out the video. It's pretty dark in there but you can still more or less see him in action.

Mr Farhan seems to be pretty serious in here. He complained later on that he has tummy ache. Poor baby. First the smelly bug, then tummy ache.

The pictures here are not that great, my camera is partly to be blamed. But anyway, I love the lighting effect - the pics are blurry but still colorful.

These turned out to be much better. I took them with mom's camera.

Time to go back. Mr Ezzat is getting restless. Actually it has already passed his bed time. And this boy always sleeps on time!

But before that, one final picture of the Mukthi's fam (Farhan is not looking so good though). Blink! And off we go.

And here's another video, this time with a bit of lighting. I like the song. Enjoy!

Tok Wan's Orchard (2)

Here are more pictures from the trip. And the same video, only this time it's from Youtube coz it has bigger screen.

Here's dad / Tok Wan again, working real hard. During Japanese occupation during WWII, tapioca was the main source of food here as rice was scarce and very expensive back then. There are abundant of tapiocas here in this orchard.

What shall we make this time?

The jungle as our backyard.

Emir was doing his bit.

Tok Wan's Orchard

I forgot about a short visit we had when we went to Tok Wan's orchard a few weeks back (Tok Wan - nickname for grandfather). I just remembered about it when I took a look of some pictures taken with my phone. I recalled the date well because that was D-Day Uncle Dan was supposed to go for his BIIGGG ADVENTURE too - on May 9th. He didn't go until the next day though.

Farhan didn't want to go because he was really into cartoons that morning. So it was only me, Emir, Ezzat and Tok Wan. Tok (Grandma) was doing her gardening, and besides she was never really into stuff like this. Tok Wan took his really old van (see pic) and it was one hell of a ride in it, just imagine being in a tin box which is drivable.

That van is probably older than me.

Anyway, when we got there, the place was covered with wild bushes as tall as Emir, so dad decided to give it a trim and we just spent most of the time wondering around the house and didn't dare to venture far. And I've only been here twice since dad told me he bought this place last year.

Dad at work. You can see some tapioca trees.

Still busy trimming.

Wo hoo ma, look at what I found! A banana flower!!!

Sweet!

Mangosteen is one of the local fruits which one can find in dad's orchard, apart from durian, dokong, rambutan, and banana. I saw some tapioca plants too the other day. Here's a cute little mangosteen which unfortunately fell down before it got riped. Riped ones will have deep purple skin and that's really sweet and nice.

From the balcony.

During high tide. Dad's gonna built a jetty here.

Can we go back now?

Youtube is not cooperating today, and I'm not sure the quality of the video by Blogger. But here's a video taken while we're there. Can you spot a lizard on the tree?